The Red Knight (58 page)

‘I don’t mean to whine,’ said the scribe, ‘But do you know what time it is?’

The captain drank another cup of wine. ‘I want you to ask around,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’m hoping you can find it for me. I know
I’m not making sense. But there’s a traitor in this fortress. I have suspicions, but nothing like a shred of proof. Who here can communicate with the outside world? Who has a secret
hatred of the Abbess? Or a secret love of the Wild?’

He almost choked on the last words.

The scribe shook his head. Yawned. ‘I’ll ask around,’ he said. ‘Can I go back to bed?’

The captain felt foolish. ‘I may be wrong,’ he said.

The scribe rolled his eyes – but he waited until he was out of the captain’s door to do it.

The captain finished his cup and threw himself, fully dressed, on his bed. When the chapel bell rang he tried not to count the rings, so he could pretend he’d had a full night’s
sleep.

Michael could hear the captain snoring, and envied him. The archers said he’d ‘been busy’ half the night with his pretty nun, and Michael was vaguely envious,
vaguely jealous, and desperately admiring. And mad as hell, of course. It was
unfair.

The third day had been so without event that Michael had begun to wonder whether the captain was wrong. He’d told them the enemy would attack.

All day, the wyverns flew back and forth.

Something monstrous belled and belled, a high, clear note made somehow huge and terrifying in the woods.

Michael sat back. He wasn’t any good at keeping a journal, and he knew that he was leaving out important developments. Wilful Murder had shot a boglin almost three hundred
paces away – shooting from a high tower, over the fog, on the dawn breeze. He was now drunk as a lord on the beer ration provided by his mates. But it didn’t seem to change the siege.
Or be a notable or noble event. Michael had only the histories from his father’s library as his examples, and they never mentioned archers.

The captain came in. He had dark circles under his eyes.

‘Go to bed,’ he said.

Michael needed no second urging. But he paused in the doorway.

‘No attack?’ he said.

‘Your talent for stating the obvious must make you wildly popular,’ the captain said savagely.

Michael shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

The captain rubbed his head. ‘I was
sure
he’d attack the trench today. Instead, he’s sent something – and I worry it’s a strong force – south across
the river, despite our burning his boats. There’s a convoy down there, he’s going to destroy it, and I can’t stop him – or even try – until I’ve bloodied his
nose in my little trap, and my trap isn’t catching anything.’ The captain drank some wine. ‘It’s all fucking hubris. I can’t actually predict what the enemy will
do.’

Michael was stung. ‘You’ve done all right so far.’

The captain shrugged. ‘It’s all luck. Go sleep. The fun part of this siege is over. If he doesn’t go for my nice trench—’

‘Why should he?’ Michael asked.

‘Is that the apprentice captain asking, or the squire?’ the captain asked, pouring himself more wine. He spilled some.

‘Just an interested bystander,’ Michael said, and casually, by mistake done-apurpose., knocked the captain’s wine off the table. ‘Sorry, m’lord. I’ll fetch
more.’

The captain stiffened, and then yawned. ‘Nah. I’ve had too much. He has to assume I’ve filled the trench with men and that with one good rush he can overrun it and kill half my
force.’

‘But you have filled it with men,’ Michael said. ‘I saw you send them out.’

The captain smiled.

Michael shook his head. ‘Where are they?’

‘In the Bridge Castle,’ the captain said. ‘It was very clever, but either he saw through the whole thing or he’s too much of a coward to try us.’ He looked in his
wine cup and made a face. ‘Where’s Miss Lanthorn?’ he asked. Then he relented. ‘Why don’t you go see her?’

Michael bowed. ‘Good night,’ he said. And he slipped out into the hallway and pulled his pallet across the captain’s door.

He spent an eternity searching the torchlit darkness.

Elissa was sitting on a barrel entertaining half the garrison with a lewd story. But her youngest sister wasn’t there.

Mary was drinking wine in the Western Tower with Lis the laundress, Sukey Oakshot, the seamstress’s daughter, Bad Tom, Ser George Brewes, and Francis Atcourt. There were cards and dice on
the table, and the women were laughing hard. All seven looked up when Michael leaned in.

‘She’s not here,’ Tom yelled, and guffawed. The other men-at-arms laughed indulgently, and Michael fled.

‘Who’s not here?’ Lis asked.

‘His leman. Boy’s in love.’ Tom shook his head and his great hand, under the table, chanced against Sukey’s ankle. She kicked him. ‘Which I’m
a’married,’ she said, apparently unafraid of the largest man in the castle.

Tom shrugged. ‘Can’t fault a man for trying,’ he said.

‘Who’s his leman, then?’ Lis asked. ‘One o’ your slatterns? He’s too nice for an oyster, ain’t he?’

‘Oyster?’ asked Mary.

‘A lass as opens and shuts with the tide,’ Lis said, and drank more wine.

‘Like you, eh?’ said Mary.

Lis laughed. ‘Mary, you’re a local girl. Boys think you are easy. That’s a long chalk from what those girls do.’

Francis Atcourt shrugged. ‘They’re people like everyone else, Lis. An’ they play cards and go to church.’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry. I got a deep draught of mortality
today.’

Tom nodded. ‘Drink more.’

Mary looked at Lis, caught beween admiration and anger. ‘So what you do—’ she said.

‘What I do is live my life wi’out being ruled by a man,’ Lis said. ‘Men is good for play and not so good for anything else.’

Tom laughed.

Ser George tossed his cards on the table, disgusted. ‘What is this, philosophy hour?’

‘And it’s your fucking sister the young squire’s riding,’ Lis said. She wasn’t sure just why she was angry.

Mary stood up, affronted. ‘That’s just like Fran – make a rule and then break it herself.’

Lis laughed. ‘Not Fran.’

Mary stopped dead. ‘Kaitlin? She’s not – she wouldn’t! She’s—’

Lis laughed.

Michael found her in the stable with three other girls, all younger. They were dancing. He went from horse to horse, looking them over. The girls stopped dancing, and one
suddenly shouted that she was an evil monster and started shrieking, and the other two were laughing, or crying.

And then one of them was screaming, and Kaitlin was soothing her. Michael had been fooled by the screams, but he was over the stall and with them in a moment.

Kaitlin’s eyes met his. She had the little girl pressed against her.

‘We’re going to be
eaten,
’ bawled the child.

Kaitlin rocked her back and forth. ‘No, we’re not,’ she said firmly. She raised her face to Michael.

Michael knew she was asking something of him, but neither of them were sure exactly what it was. So he knelt with them. ‘I swear on my hope of being a knight and going to heaven, I will
protect you,’ he said.

‘He’s not a knight, he’s just a squire,’ said the other girl, with the dreadful truthfulness that afflicts the young. She looked at Michael with enormous eyes.

Kaitlin’s eyes met his.

‘I will protect you anyway.’ Michael said, keeping his voice light.

‘I don’t want to be eaten!’ said the first girl. But the sobs were fading.

‘I’ll bet we’re gooey and delicious!’ said the second girl. She grinned at Michael. ‘And that’s why they attack us!’ she said, as if this solved a deep,
difficult problem she’d been having.

Kaitlin hugged them both. ‘I think some people are silly,’ she said.

The third girl threw a clod of horse manure at Michael and he was caught in an odd dilemma. He wanted Kaitlin alone and yet, watching her with children, he wanted this moment to go on forever.
And for the first time, he thought –
I could marry her.

Amicia reached out.
His door was very slightly open and she slipped through, a wraith in the green light. The Warlock who laid siege to the fortress was so powerful that he
shone like a green sun in her woods, and the green light battered his tower door.

He was there, standing by the statue of a woman.

‘I was just coming to look for you,’ he said happily. And yawned.

She shook her head. ‘Go to sleep. You didn’t even renew your powers this morn.’

He shook his head. ‘One hour with you—’

She backed away. ‘Good night,’ she said, and she shut the door. From outside.

He fell asleep so quickly he dreamed of her.

Michael leaned down and placed his mouth tenderly on hers, and her lips opened under his.

‘I love you,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Silly.’

He grabbed her chin. ‘I’ll marry you,’ he said.

Her eyes grew huge.

The door of the next stall flew open. ‘Kaitlin Lanthorn!’ shrieked her sister. ‘You little bitch!’

Green light exploded in the sky outside the stables, and a thunderous concussion shook the walls.

‘To arms!’ shouted twenty voices on the walls.

The captain leapt from his bed without knowing what had awakened him, and found himself standing by his armour rack with Michael, who had never gone to bed, getting him into
his hauberk. He wasn’t even awake and Michael was pulling the laces as tight as he could at the back, and then he had his old shoes on over bare legs and was racing along the wall.

‘Bridge Castle,’ Bent shouted from the tower above them. Michael was trying to get into his brigantine while simultaneously watching the starlit sky and the walls.

The fog was gone – it had been swept away in a mighty gust of wind. The captain felt the wind, and knew it for what it was. He smiled into it.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

Two beacon fires were alight, and there was a lot of shouting – the distinctive sound of men in danger, or anger.

‘We need a way to communicate with the Bridge Castle.’ The captain leaned on the wall as Michael, now secure in his brigantine and feeling the pain from his ribs, knelt to buckle his
knight’s metal leg harnesses on – a pair of valets were carrying the armour along behind them as the captain moved. It might have been comical, if the situation hadn’t been so
terrifying.

Michael gradually got the captain into his harness as the infuriating man moved from position to position throughout the fortress. He made off-colour jokes to nursing sisters and he clasped
hands with Bad Tom and he ordered Sauce to mount up in the new covered alley in the courtyard – covered, Michael assumed, to keep the wyverns off the horses. It was the same sortie he’d
prepared the night before, and ordered to stand down.

An hour later, the west tower ballista loosed with a sharp
crack
. As far as Michael could see the bolt had no effect out in the dark.

Michael got the rest of his own armour on, paused to rest, and fell asleep standing up at the corner where the west wall intersected the west tower.

He awoke to a loud roar. A sea of fire stretched almost to his feet and screams pierced the full-throated bellow of war. The captain’s hand closed on his vambrace. ‘Here they
come!’ he shouted. ‘On my mark!’

Michael looked up, and saw a man leaning far out over the west tower edge, and the sky was not light, but it was grey.

‘Welcome back,’ the captain said cheerfully. ‘Have a good nap?’

‘Sorry,’ Michael mumbled.

‘Don’t be. Real soldiers sleep every minute they can, in times like this. Our attackers are making an attempt on the Bridge Castle and the Lower Town, while, I assume, sending men to
look at what we built yesterday. Or perhaps to burn it.’ He sounded quite happy about the prospect.

Michael took a deep breath. A valet put a cup of warm wine into his hand and he drank it off.

The captain leaned well out over the wall. ‘Loose!’ he called.

The trebuchet in the western tower creaked, and the whole tower moved by the width of a finger.

‘Hail shot. Watch this.’

Michael had sometimes entertained his brothers and sisters by throwing handfuls of stones into water. This was like that, only multiplied many hundreds of times, with larger stones, and instead
of striking water most of them hit the ground. The rest fell on chitinous hides and flesh and blood, having fallen several hundred feet.

‘Again!’ the captain called.

Down in the Bridge Castle, both of their heavy onagers loosed together, throwing baskets of stones the size of a man’s heart out into the trenches built the day before.

Screams rose out of the churned ground.

‘You seem very pleased with yourself,’ the Abbess said. She was fully dressed and looked exactly the same as she did in the height of a calm day. She had come around the corner by
the west tower, attended by stretcher-bearers and a pair of nursing sisters.

‘The enemy has just fallen into our little trap with both feet.’ He turned to Bent. ‘We’ll get one more round off. Then raise both red flags. At that signal everyone
– everyone in the garrison except you and the engine crews – attacks down the road. On me.’